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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Damon Griffin" data-source="post: 617725" data-attributes="member: 3568">Incarnations of the ChampionThis is essentially correct, except that I'm not sure why barsoomcore makes the "sort of" qualification.  Elric is an incarnation of the Champion, one of many.  Elric is certainly the most popular incarnation, but not necessarily the most interesting...and definitely not the one you would most like to hang around with.Elric of MelniboneSailor on the Seas of FateThe Vanishing TowerThe Bane of the Black SwordStormbringerThere are six books in the essential Elric story; barsoomcore left out The Weird of the White Wolf, which comes between Sailor On the Seas of Fate and The Vanishing Tower; the order is otherwise correct as listed.  As has been previously noted, there are additional Elric stories, including The Dreamthief's Daughter, Fortress of the Pearl, Elric At the End of Time and probably others I'm overlooking at the moment.  None of these are essential to the epic, but neither do I recommend against reading them.Elric books why may be safely ignored as redundant are: The Singing Citadel, The Dreaming City, the Stealer of Souls, and the Sleeping Sorceress.  Three of these were early editions of Elric's story -- the same story told in the six books above -- which were re-edited without Moorcock's permission; and the fourth included an out-of-context fragment that is properly part of Weird of the White Wolf (or was it The Vanishing Tower?) Moorcock has written a truly staggering amount of material, and keeping track of what goes where or refers to which is a massive task. That is certainly true.  If you read the Elric books and stop, you are doing yourself a great disservice, even if you are only interested in his Eternal Champion storyline.  In addition to the six Elric books above, I would recommend reading the following (the featured incarnation of the Champion is listed in parentheses for each):The Eternal Champion (John Daker/Erekose)The Silver Warriors* (Urlik Skarsol)The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell (Clen of Clen Gar; graphic novel)*aka Phoenix in ObsidianThe Swords Trilogy (Corum Jhaelen Irsei) - The King of the Swords - The Queen of the Swords - The Knight of the SwordsThe Chronicles of Corum (Corum Llaw Ereint) - The Bull and the Spear - The Oak and the Ram - The Sword and the StallionThe History of the Runestaff (Dorian Hawkmoon) - The Jewel in the Skull - The Mad God's Amulet - The Sword of the Dawn - The RunestaffThe Chronicles of Castle Brass (Count Brass) - Count Brass - The Champion of Garathorm - The Quest for TanelornThe last line of the Quest for Tanelorn reads "This ends the long story of the Eternal Champion."  However, the sets above can be read in any order.  Keep to the sequence listed within each set, but the Hawkmoon books can be read before or after Corum, before or after Elric, etc., without any disruption.In fact, on at least two occasions, multiple incarnations of the Champions meet each other.  In their respective series, Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and Erekose board a strange ship that sails between worlds; this encounter is told from their different points of view as is one other, and by comparing the two it is apparent that the Champions are not moving in the same direction along their respective timestreams -- it's as if you and I meet in 1990 and you claim to remember me, though I am certain we've never met...then when I run into you again in 2002, you do not recall ever meeting me, but I do remember you (though I remember you as looking older. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />If you get through the above, you can pretty much say you've read all the "core" Eternal Champion books, though there are many, many peripherals.  Some involve Elric, several Jerry Cornelius, a few Oswald Bastable or members of the von Bek family.  Several of these are quite good.  There's also a "Mars" trilogy which is less an Eternal Champion story than an homage to (or ripoff of, if you prefer) John Carter, Warlord of Mars.Feel free to email directly if you want a longer list of Moorcock's books.  I have 80+ of his books, but I'm a long way from having all he wrote.</blockquote>

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